CHAPTER VI.
A year after the resolution thus come to, I was at home for the holidays.
“I hope,” said my mother, “that they are doing Sisty justice. I do think he is not nearly so quick a child as he was before he went to school. I wish you would examine him, Austin.”
“I have examined him, my dear. It is just as I expected; and I am quite satisfied.”
“What! you really think he has come on?” said my mother joyfully.
“He does not care a button for botany now,” said Mr Squills.
“And he used to be so fond of music, dear boy!” observed my mother with a sigh. “Good gracious! what noise is that?”
“Your son’s pop-gun against the window,” said my father. “It is lucky it is only the window; it would have made a less deafening noise, though, if it had been Mr Squills’ head, as it was yesterday morning.”
“The left ear,” observed Squills; “and a very sharp blow it was, too. Yet you are satisfied, Mr Caxton?”
“Yes; I think the boy is now as great a blockhead as most boys of his age are,” observed my father with great complacency.
“Dear me, Austin—a great blockhead!”
“What else did he go to school for?” asked my father; and observing a certain dismay in the face of his female audience, and a certain surprise in that of his male, he rose and stood on the hearth, with one hand in his waistcoat, as was his wont when about to philosophise in more detail than was usual to him.
“Mr Squills,” said he, “you have had great experience in families.”
“As good a practice as any in the county,” said Mr Squills proudly: “more than I can manage. I shall advertise for a partner.”
“And,” resumed my father, “you must have observed almost invariably that, in every family, there is what father, mother, uncle and aunt, pronounce to be one wonderful child.”
“One at least,” said Mr Squills, smiling.
“It is easy,” continued my father, “to say this is parental partiality,—but it is not so. Examine that child as a stranger, and it will startle yourself. You stand amazed at its eager curiosity, its quick comprehension, its ready wit, its delicate perception. Often, too, you will find some faculty strikingly developed; the child will have a turn for mechanics, perhaps, and make you a model of a steamboat,—or it will have an ear tuned to verse, and will write you a poem like that it has got by heart from ‘The Speaker,’—or it will take to botany, (like Pisistratus) with the old maid its aunt,—or it will play a march on its sister’s pianoforte. In short, even you, Squills, will declare that it is really a wonderful child.”
“Upon my word,” said Mr Squills thoughtfully, “there’s a great deal of truth in what you say; little Tom Dobbs is a wonderful child—so is Frank Steppington—and as for Johnny Styles, I must bring him here for you to hear him prattle on Natural History, and see how well he handles his pretty little microscope.”
“Heaven forbid!” said my father. “And now let me proceed. These thaumata or wonders last till when, Mr Squills?—last till the boy goes to school, and then, somehow or other, the thaumata vanish into thin air, like ghosts at the cockcrow. A year after the prodigy has been at the academy, father and mother, uncle and aunt, plague you no more with his doings and sayings; the extraordinary infant has become a very ordinary little boy. Is it not so, Mr Squills?”
“Indeed you are right, sir. How did you come to be so observant; you never seem to—”
“Hush!” interrupted my father; and then, looking fondly at my mother’s anxious face, he said, soothingly—“be comforted: this is wisely ordained—and it is for the best.”
“It must be the fault of the school,” said my mother, shaking her head.
“It is the necessity of the school, and its virtue, my Kate. Let any one of these wonderful children—wonderful as you thought Sisty himself—stay at home, and you will see its head grow bigger and bigger, and its body thinner and thinner—Eh, Mr Squills?—till the mind take all nourishment from the frame, and the frame, in turn, stint or make sickly the mind. You see that noble oak from the window—if the Chinese had brought it up, it would have been a tree in miniature at five years old, and at an hundred, you would have set it in a flower-pot on your table, no bigger than it was at five—a curiosity for its matureness at one age—a show for its diminutiveness at the other. No! the ordeal for talent is school; restore the stunted mannikin to the growing child, and then let the child if it can, healthily, hardily, naturally, work its slow way up into greatness. If greatness be denied it, it will at least be a man, and that is better than to be a little Johnny Styles all its life—an oak in a pill-box.”
At that moment I rushed into the room, glowing and panting, health on my cheek, vigour in my limbs—all childhood at my heart. “Oh! mamma, I have got up the kite—so high!—come and see. Do come, papa.”
“Certainly,” said my father; “only, don’t cry so loud—kites make no noise in rising—yet, you see how they soar above the world. Come, Kate, where is my hat? Ah—thank you, my boy.”
“Kitty,” said my father, looking at the kite which, attached by its string to the peg I had stuck into the ground, rested calm in the sky, “never fear but what our kite shall fly as high; only, the human soul has stronger instincts to mount upward than a few sheets of paper on a framework of lath. But, observe, that to prevent its being lost in the freedom of space, we must attach it lightly to earth; and, observe again, my dear, that the higher it soars, the more string we must give it.”
Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh.
[1]. “On the French Revolutions,” Nos. I.–V. Jan.–May, 1831.
[2]. 5,468,000 in 1836, which must be at least 6,000,000 in 1848.—Statistique de la France—(Agriculture, 84–89.)
[3]. Democratie Pacifique, 1st March 1848.
[4]. Democratie Pacifique, 1st March, 1848, p. 1.
[5]. Ibid.
[6]. Democratie Pacifique, March 1, 1848.
[7]. Democratie Pacifique, March 2, 1848.
[8]. The present state of the finances of France is thus explained by the Finance Minister:—
“On the 1st of January 1841, the capital of the public debt, the government stock belonging to the sinking fund being deducted, was 4,267,315,402 francs. On the 1st of January 1848, it amounted to 5,179,644,730 francs. Far from taking advantage of so long a peace to reduce the amount of the debt, the last administration augmented it in those enormous proportions,—912,329,328 francs in seven years.
“BUDGETS.
“The budgets followed the progression of the debt.
“Those of 1829 to 1830 amount to 1,014,914,000 francs. The entire of the credits placed at the disposal of the fallen government to the year 1847 amounts to 1,712,979,639f. 62c. Notwithstanding the successive increase of the receipts, the budgets presented each year a considerable deficit. The expenses from 1840 to 1847 inclusively, exceeded the receipts by 604,525,000 francs. The deficit calculated for the year 1848 is 48,000,000 francs, without counting the additional chapter of supplementary and extraordinary credits, which will raise the total amount of the budgets to the charge of the last administration to 652,525,000 francs.
“PUBLIC WORKS.
“The public works heedlessly undertaken simultaneously, at all points of the territory, to satisfy or to encourage electoral corruption, and not with that reserve which prudence so imperiously commanded, have raised the credits to 1,081,000,000 francs. From this sum are to be deducted the sums reimbursed by the companies, amounting to 160,000,000 francs; the last loan, 82,000,000 francs, making together 242,000,000 francs, and leaving a balance of 839,000,000 francs. Out of this sum, 435,000,000 francs has been expended out of the resources of the floating debt, and 404,000,000 francs still remain to be expended on the completion of the works.
“FLOATING DEBT.
“The floating debt increased in proportions not less considerable. At the commencement of 1831 it reached an amount of about 250,000,000 francs. At the date of the 26th of February last it exceeded 670,000,000 francs, to which is to be added the government stock belonging to the savings’ banks, 202,000,000 francs, making altogether 972,000,000 francs. Under such a system the position of the central office of the Treasury could not often be brilliant. During the two hundred and sixty-eight last days of its existence, the fallen government expended more than 294,800,000 francs beyond its ordinary resources, or 1,100,000 francs per day.”—Report of Finance Minister, March 9, 1848.
[9]. Lamartine, “Histoire des Girondins,” iii. 244, 245.
[10]. “La plus grande erreur contre laquelle il faille premunir la population de nos campagnes, c’est que pour être representant il soit nécessaire d’avoir de l’éducation ou de la fortune.”—Circulaire du Ministre d’Instruction publique, Mars 9 et 6, 1848.
[11]. Tacitus.
[12]. Burke’s Works.
[13]. “God is patient because eternal.”
[14]. De Tocqueville, Democratie en Amerique, ii. 268.
[15]. These lines were composed on the north coast of Scotland, in view of a wild sea-cave, the extent of which has never been ascertained. The Atlantic rolls into it with such fury during a tempest, that the spray rises like smoke from an orifice in the rock resembling a chimney, at some distance from the mouth of the cave. This singular and startling effect has no doubt given rise to the popular name of this remarkable cavern—Hell’s Lum. Scott would have been pleased with it, and its romantic legends of mermaids, &c.
[16]. Histoire de la Conquête de Naples par Charles d’Anjou, frère de St Louis. Par le Comte Alexis de St Priest, Pair de France. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1848. Vols. i. to iii.
[17].
“Plasmi el cavalier Frances
E la donna Catalana,” &c., &c.
A well-known song which Voltaire rightly attributes to Frederick II., and which Guinguené, who is here wrong in his criticism of Voltaire, gives to Frederick Barbarossa.
[18].
“Der wart auch Chunrad genant
Doch ner alle Welhesche Lannd
Da nannten die Lewt in
Nicht anders denn Chunradin.”
Ottakher’s Austriæ Chronicon Germanicum.
[19]. In the middle ages remarried queens lost their title. Conradin, in his edicts, never called his mother otherwise than comitissa.
[20]. The Life of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke; with Selections from his Correspondence, Diaries, Speeches, and Judgments. By George Harris, Esq., Barrister at Law. In 3 vols. London: Moxon.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
| Page | Changed from | Changed to |
|---|---|---|
| [439] | when Conrad died, at the of twenty-six | when Conrad died, at the age of twenty-six |
| [441] | allowed our lord to enter our walls | allow our lord to enter our walls |
| [442] | with the Infante Don Pedro, daughter | with the Infante Don Pedro, son |
| [497] | intrépide! A la recousse!” was | intrépide! A la rescousse!” was |
| [504] | Liberté—Fraternité—Egalité | Liberté—Fraternité—Égalité |
| [506] | Ah traitre! monstre! polisson | Ah traître! monstre! polisson |
- Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
- Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter.